The Doctor and Steven find themselves in 1572 France, just prior to the
mass slaughter of the Protestant Huguenots by Catherine de Medici. While
the Doctor goes to visit apothecary Charles Preslin, Steven becomes
embroiled in the lives of several prominent Huguenots, and must come to
terms with the Doctor's unwillingness to alter history to stop the
imminent massacre.

Production

On February 24th, 1965, story editor Dennis Spooner invited John
Lucarotti, who had last written The Aztecs a
year earlier, to submit a new historical story idea to the Doctor
Who production office. After a discussion with former series director
Waris Hussein, Lucarotti's first initiative was to set his story around
the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (which had also been the basis of Terry Nation's
aborted “The Red Fort”). However, Doctor Who
historicals had recently been restricted to settings prior to 1600, and so
this concept was discarded in late March.

Lucarotti instead began developing a storyline about the Viking discovery
of Newfoundland around the year 1000. During this time, John Wiles and
Donald Tosh came aboard as Doctor Who's new producer and story
editor, respectively. Tosh was unaware of Lucarotti's work and actually
contacted the writer independently to discuss ideas for Doctor Who.
After learning of the Viking storyline, Tosh elected to allow Lucarotti to
proceed forward with it, asking only that Lucarotti make some changes to
take into account the more mysterious atmosphere the new production team
envisioned for the series. Lucarotti consented, and was therefore
astonished to learn, on June 24th, that his storyline had been rejected as
unsuitable.

It was John Wiles' desire to make use of religious
conflict in Doctor Who

Unhappy that two proposals had now been passed over by the Doctor
Who production office after believing he had been guaranteed a
commission by Spooner, Lucarotti involved his agents. To resolve the
matter, Tosh agreed to discuss a new storyline with Lucarotti. Drawing on
Wiles' desire to make use of religious conflict in Doctor Who, it
was apparently Tosh who suggested the 1572 Huguenot massacre as a
potential setting. Lucarotti was commissioned to write “The War Of
God” on July 9th.

In composing his storyline, Lucarotti made use of an interest expressed by
both Wiles and William Hartnell to have the star play different roles in
the programme. (Indeed, Hartnell had earlier suggested he could play the
Doctor's evil time travelling progeny in a story called “The Son Of
Doctor Who”!) This led to the creation of the Abbot of Amboise,
named for the central French town which was the site of a 1560 Huguenot
conspiracy against the Catholic House of Guise.

As the summer progressed, Wiles and Tosh realised they had a problem on
their hands with regard to the Doctor's female companion. They had decided
to dispense with Vicki and replace her with Trojan handmaiden Katarina,
only to realise that that character's primitive origins made her less than
ideal for viewer identification. They therefore elected to kill off
Katarina in the serial which would precede “The War Of God”,
The Daleks' Master Plan. As a result, it
appears that Lucarotti was asked to incorporate a new companion, young
Protestant maid Anne Chaplet, into his scripts. Anne would escape the
Huguenot massacre by joining the Doctor and Steven in the TARDIS.

Having not forgotten the tense circumstances surrounding the commissioning
of “The War Of God”, Wiles and Tosh were keen not to further
upset Lucarotti. Consequently, in the autumn they accepted the writer's
scripts and paid him for his efforts, deciding that Tosh should make all
further rewrites. Tosh rearranged the pace of events so that Hartnell
would need to appear as both the Doctor and the Abbot only in the first
episode. He would play the Abbot in the second and third episodes, and the
Doctor in the fourth, thereby simplifying the logistics of the production.
Additionally, in part two Hartnell would now appear in just one scene,
which could be prefilmed, enabling him to take a week's holiday.

As a companion, Anne Chaplet would present many of the
same difficulties as Katarina

Most significantly, Wiles and Tosh eventually realised that adopting Anne
as an ongoing character would present many of the same difficulties as
Katarina. Tosh therefore rewrote the ending to have Anne remain in France
and included a new coda to the story, set in modern-day England. This
introduced Dorothea “Dodo” Chaplet, by implication a
descendant of Anne's (which meant that she somehow escaped the massacre).
Dodo -- a character devised by Wiles and Tosh -- would now be the Doctor's
new companion. Upon learning of the extent of Tosh's changes, Lucarotti
asked that his name be removed from the credits; this request was
ultimately rescinded.

By late 1965, the story had acquired a new title, The Massacre Of St
Bartholomew's Eve -- after the shorter “The Massacre Of St
Bartholomew” had briefly been employed from around August -- and was
designated Serial W. The director assigned to it was Paddy Russell.
Russell had started her career as an actress before becoming one of the
BBC's first female directors in 1961. Three years later she made the
decision to go freelance, but continued to work on BBC programmes such as
Compact. Russell had been the first director assigned to Inside The Spaceship in early 1964, but was
unavailable for the required dates. She would now become the first woman
to helm a Doctor Who story after all.

In early December, Jackie Lane was cast as Dodo. Lane, who sometimes acted
under the name “Jackie Lenya”, had appeared in programmes
including Coronation Street and Compact, as well as in
theatre. In the summer of 1963, Lane had turned down the opportunity to
play another companion, Susan; at the time she was not interested in
taking on a long-term assignment. On December 29th, Lane was contracted to
play Dodo for thirteen episodes (encompassing the final part of The
Massacre as well as Serials X, Y and Z), with an option for twelve
more. Wiles hoped that Dodo could be made distinctive by having Lane's
long hair styled differently in every story. This plan had to be
scuppered, however, when Lane opted for a very short haircut soon after
passing her audition.

It had been hoped that Ian and Barbara might make a cameo
appearance during Dodo's introductory scene

With New Year's Day 1966 not long past, production on The Massacre
got under way with filming at the Ealing Television Film Studios, from
January 3rd to 6th, concentrating on material set on the streets of Paris.
On the last day, Hartnell (as the Abbot of Amboise) performed the only
scene required of him for The Sea Beggar. On January 7th, a short
amount of location filming was conducted at Windmill Lane near Wimbledon
Common for Dodo's introductory scene. It had earlier been hoped that
William Russell and Jacqueline Hill might make cameo appearances as former
companions Ian and Barbara on this day; they would hear the TARDIS
dematerialising and just miss it as it disappears. In the event, the pair
were replaced by a woman (played by Marguerite Young) walking her dog. The
location filming also marked Jackie Lane's first work on Doctor
Who, and a photocall was held to introduce her on the same day.

Meanwhile, in December, both Wiles and Tosh had resigned from Doctor
Who after encountering numerous difficulties during the making of the
epic The Daleks' Master Plan. Tosh was the
first to leave the programme, handing over to Gerry Davis in mid-January
1966. Davis' first credit would come on the fourth episode of The
Massacre; this meant that Tosh could receive a co-writing credit on
this installment, something typically forbidden for a BBC story
editor.

Studio recording for The Massacre began on January 21st, and
continued on consecutive Fridays; Doctor Who returned to its usual
studio home of Riverside 1 for this serial. Hartnell was absent on January
28th while he enjoyed his week's vacation.

Although he had done some work on forthcoming stories, particularly
The Celestial Toymaker, The Massacre Of St
Bartholomew's Eve marked Donald Tosh's final Doctor Who credit.
He went on to further writing and story editing, including Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. In 1967, Tosh submitted a proposal for
a Doctor Who adventure entitled “The Rosacrutians” (or
“The Rose Marriners”) which was not taken forward. Tosh left
television in the mid-Seventies to become the caretaker of St Mawes castle
in Cornwall.

This was also Lucarotti's last broadcast Doctor Who adventure,
although Season Twelve's The Ark In Space
started life as a concept by Lucarotti which was then heavily rewritten by
script editor Robert Holmes. Lucarotti continued writing for television
throughout the Sixties and Seventies, including programmes like
Moonbase 3. In the Eighties, he novelised his three Doctor
Who stories for WH Allen, restoring The Massacre Of St
Bartholomew's Eve more closely to his original vision. Lucarotti
passed away on November 20th, 1994.